


Floodgates

by PlainJaneEyre



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-08
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 23:11:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1917606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlainJaneEyre/pseuds/PlainJaneEyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim acknowledges his insanity, but he would prefer to call it an evolutionary response to severe trauma. And perhaps, someday, he'll get enough time to process all the darkness left inside him. </p><p> </p><p>Trigger warnings for all kinds of things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Floodgates

**Author's Note:**

> Here you go, lovelies. Written while I had a fever, so my mind is running wild and wrecking havoc.  
> And comments will be deeply appreciated.

This is not the worst thing, he tells himself. 

Normally, that works fine, snaps him out of whatever it is. He's spent so long emotionally deadening himself that not very much can affect him now. Everything real is locked away. 

Sometimes, if it's real bad, he lets a tiny drop of remembered pain spill over the floodgates he's erected in his mind. Lets just a tiny speck of everything that has been done to him, everything that has made him this way, emerge into his consciousness. 

He supposes that a medical professional might call his floodgates "dissociation." He's spent enough time reading the scientific literature (he is brilliant, after all) to agree with this assessment, but he also believes that the floodgates are serving a useful purpose in his mind, protecting him from all those memories of agony. And in consequence, all those feelings. 

An evolutionary response to severe trauma.

Once he's an adult and fully understands what's been done to him, he tells himself that, one of these days, he'll get around to deconstructing the gates. That once he just has enough money, he'll stop this, he'll sort himself out, he really will. Pull out each memory one by one, smell the bouquet like a wine connoisseur, and process. But for now, the thoughts, the feelings, and particularly the pain remain in the same muddled mess they were when he was a child. 

When he's feeling especially guilty about this, he tells himself that he's just had no time, what between work and everything. He carefully doesn't think about how much of that enforced business stems from wanting to avoid the processing. 

But it's a good system, over all. If things seep out every now and then, well, no barrier is perfect. And he's discovered that his changeability, the sudden mad anger that sometimes escapes, is even more intimidating to his employees. 

He was taught that fear is the only way to rule, and he is deeply terrified of what is behind the gates. As the days go on, the threat of having to deal with all of those suppressed emotions is what drives him darker. 

And yet, when things get real bad, he still drags out a bit of the muddled mess of leftover emotions from behind the gates. He's not sure why he drags it out--if it's a punishment or a morale booster. If he's reminding herself of how much worse things can get, if he doesn't handle the situation correctly, or if he's reminding herself of how strong he is. 

He drags it out when he kills Carl Powers because he can't stand his teasing, not anymore. He drags it out when he's seventeen and just discovering his sexuality and the man in the bar leers at him and rapes him in the bathroom while growling that he was "asking for it." He drags it out when he runs over a rabbit, because he never could bear when animals die, they're too helpless with their big dark eyes and the child behind the floodgates screams with just a little bit too much recognition. He drags it out when he sees the way Sherlock looks at John and feels the black shriveled remains of his heart crush in on itself. 

He's a visual person, and he likes to think of himself as pipetting out the murky blackness behind the gates, and inserting it into the beautiful waters of his mind. He selects careful measurements of how much he'll need for each circumstance--a hundred microliters there, perhaps a milliliter here. He likes how scientific a procedure it is inside his head. Science is comfortingly rational, unemotional. And it makes his strategy feel less of a "positively insane process that probably should be medically evaluated" and into more of a "totally legitimate coping mechanism." 

He's willing to admit that he's completely insane, but there's a part of him that still wistfully hopes that his madness is only a passing stage, that at some point he'll get it together.

He considers seeing a therapist, imagines her face as he explains how many people he's killed, both with his own hands and by proxy. He tries to think of how he'd explain it to her, make her see that this was really and truly his own choice, make her understand why he does this. He can't remember why he does this.

He takes up smoking instead. 

Unfortunately, there is no way to get the murkiness (soalonepleasehelpmesomeoneanyonepleasehelp) back behind the gates once the solutions of brain and emotion are mixed. So the darkness (pleasedaddystop) corrupts his soul, and he listens to the roaring oceans of pain behind the gates and he tells one more truth to Sherlock, one truth lurking in the perfect web of lies. "All my life I've been searching for distractions. And you were the best distraction and now I don't even have you." 

He knows that if he wanted it to all end this would be the perfect time. He could shoot himself in the heart before his assassins had enough time to flinch. And his real death would cause the death of everyone Sherlock cares about, and his revenge would be complete. Sherlock would be utterly broken, and he would have no floodgates to protect him the way Jim does. 

The thought of Sherlock, broken and alone, makes Jim want a cigarette. 

But he takes a deep breath instead, and tells Sherlock "Bless you. As long as I'm alive, you can save your friends. You've got a way out. Well good luck with that." 

It's a hell of a time to start processing, but then Jim's always been changeable. 

He shoves the gun in his mouth and resigns himself to life.

**Author's Note:**

> Quotes from http://www.planetclaire.org/quotes/sherlock/series-two/the-reichenbach-fall/


End file.
